Had a neat idea for a fantasy ... suppose an angel and a demon joined forces to fight a common enemy ... and I just happen to have an angel and a demon in my own cast of characters!
I also used this as a testbed for some experiments. First, I raytraced is in Studio 3, and it took about 45 minutes. Then I raytraced it in Studio 4.10, and it took about three minutes! So there's a reason to put 4.10 to work -- speed. The new engine is soooo fast. Nice.
Then, I sent it to IRay, to see what would happen. Now, I know, I know, I know ... every single surface in an image that's going to be rendered by IRay is supposed to have a shader applied! But you have to BUY them thar shaders, and also the pro set-up lights ... and if I'm not careful I could throw a thousand dollars at this. Which I can't afford to do. Eventually I'll have to turn to Reality, because, as I remarked yesterday, IRay is a very deep money pit.
But here we are -- IRay without shaders and pro lights ... this is just the render straight from Studio 3, to 4.10, to IRay... which is what I have to work with:
Well worth the experiment, but as you can see, it's "six of one, half a dozen of the other." Without the pro lighting sets and the endless libraries of shaders which must be applied to every single surface, an IRay render is a bit different from a raytrace, but not really superior in any significant way. (In fact, Reality is better at rendering with garden variety lights and plain old mapping.) Alas, the cost of all those lighting sets and shaders for IRay is, frankly, prohibitive, for me.
So I will indeed to opting for Reality: their lights and shaders are free and/or built into the plugin. You drop fifty bucks one time, and you're good to go. That, I can afford. Hey ho.
DAZ Tech Support opened a dialog today, but only to ask for a screen shot of a window. No joy as per getting Studio 4.10 to access any content. So all I'm doing is opening Studio 3 renders in it, and playing, to learn the interface. OMG. Urg. To say I do not like it is an understatement, but it's the only way to work with the Genesis figures and the new Reality. Grit your teeth, Jade, and get it done, right? But Tech Support has to get this problem fixed for me first, or nothing new will happen! Aaarrrgghh.
